2022
John A. Murphy: An Appreciation
A name synonymous with our University, today we say goodbye to Professor John A. Murphy. Professor Murphy had an association with UCC that spans over seven decades. We express our sympathy to John's family, relatives, colleagues and friends. In this article Dr Neil Buttimer, retired Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Irish, pens this tribute to 'John A'. Ar dheis lámh Dé go raibh a anam dílis.
John may not necessarily have believed in Heaven, but I know for sure he’s there. The reason has to do with books.
Speaking of which, my first encounter with his writings occurred in secondary school some time during the late 1960s. Mine was not the former Roman Catholic diocesan seminary, St Finbarr’s College, Farranferris (1887–2006), where he taught for a decade, but the academy, across the solid dividing fence, its elder by nearly seventy years, and still on the go, much to his chagrin, I would think, the inveterate rival North Monastery (1811–). While at home one day with a cold, what better treatment to speed up recovery, instead of a hot whiskey, unimaginable, than to read a volume of his two-part Stair na hEorpa (1955–59).
John already met the first requirement for eloquence, which he claimed was to have been born in Macroom
Thinking back on it, the anthology was a piece of art for the solidity of its illustrated cover boards, type and map-work, hallmark of the care those spirited, independent publishers, Sáirséal agus Dill, devoted to all their output. That press numbered in its list some of the greats of modern Irish-language literature, like Connemara novelist and polemicist, Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906–70), whose own peripatetic career took him from 1940s’ republican internment at the Curragh to a chair in Trinity College, Dublin. Those were the days when John A. was Seán A. Ó Murchú, his tome distilling millennia of European history for a school-going readership, in Gaelic prose as concise as anything he would pen in the second official. John already met the first requirement for eloquence, which he claimed was to have been born in Macroom. He knew his background and its culture.
There was considerable relief at the Merriman Summer School in Feakle, Co. Clare, during August 1974, when it was mentioned that his single volume Ireland in the Twentieth Century (1975) had been submitted to Gill and Macmillan. It would be issued in a series covering all of Irish history down to that point. By then at UCC, Murphy’s fellow contributors from this University to the incomparable Gill History included Donnchadh Ó Corráin (1942–2017) on the pre-Norman period, Kenneth Nicholls on later medieval Ireland and John Joseph Lee, about this country after the Famine. A world-class crew, and, in Nicholls’ case, perhaps the greatest contribution of all, describing a world never properly described. Relief because the discerning Merriman attendees, academics and generally interested parties, realised that the multitude of tasks John A. had taken on in his post-teaching phase included wider public discourse as well as College professorial duties, all denying him opportunities for the production of monographs, but here was one to watch.
He made time too for Merriman, now since gone, but in those days the premier annual town-meets-gown forum for Irish studies, in honour of its Gaelic Enlightenment eponym. I was there due to the kindness of our old professor, Seán Ó Tuama (1926–2006), his close contemporary and occasional collaborator, and met another distinguished scholar, Dublin-based Celticist, James Carney (1914–89). Carney said who he was, but my reply, “I thought you were dead”, didn’t seem to darken very agreeable conversations in later years.
Vigorous almost daily walks around the nearby Lough
John A., as the phrase goes, had a lot of condition on him during the 1970s and 1980s, but this changed on retirement. His vigorous almost daily walks around the nearby Lough saw to that, fortified later by a quite full glass of house red at the Staff Dining Room lunchtime Captain’s Table, envy of others heading out for lecturing duties. He had work of his own to do, I would like to think with some tangential input from myself. Answering a request to write an account of Irish at UCC, I was helpfully allowed space in the late 1980s in the office of Mr Michael Kelleher, then Finance Officer and Secretary, who permitted dampened ancient folio student ledger records in his charge to be brought up for consultation from their place of dank repose in caverns beneath the Stone Corridor, probably leaving an indelible imprint on his immaculate desk. Time to get the College Archives in order, and especially as John A.’s other major legacy to his alma mater, its history, The College (1996), was mooted, and about to start. For this, Murphy drew among other attainments on a period of fifteen years (1964–79) as Honorary Editor of the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, close to the lengthiest stretch in that role, overseeing one of Ireland’s foremost publications of its kind. As second-next in the editorship to him, I could only manage five. Our great librarian colleague, the late Helen Davis, formerly of Boole Library’s Special Collections, where John also did much research work for that tome, used to say that there’s a special place in the Hereafter for editors, which is why we can tell where he is at present.
But who was he?
But who was he? His other wonderful near contemporary, fellow Muskerry-man, poet, Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916–77), used to say, Is mó mé i mise amháin. Others in remembering Murphy will justifiably point to the many folds of his career. In this context, it is perhaps appropriate to recall him as a committed, life-long educationalist.
When so doing, let us salute his mid- to west-Cork background, and, for this, two items. The first, a view from Clodagh townland, looking towards the unique Gearagh, south of Macroom, but also east in the direction of the fifteenth-century Franciscan foundation at Kilcrea, a reminder that learning had deep roots in John A.’s environs.
It is a note from a Harvard University Irish manuscript, its Gaelic prose from the late 1800s, but not quite scholarly in its spelling:
An tsé bheich air an árd úd os cionn Chlodagh shuas ba ró bhreágh a radharc air an lathrach ta an gach aitribh go Gaorthúdhe no an Manister áluinn mar a mbíoch na bráithre a léigh sa leighuis, agus soir le fainig go beal na namhan ngeal san Laoi gur sgeinn.
‘The person on the high ground above Clodagh, beautiful his view of the site which is in each habitation to Gearagh, or the magnificent monastery where the brothers read and healed, and sloping east towards the mouth of the bright streams until they flowed into the Lee’.
“Ah, why should life all labour be?”, said an English poet. I think John was fond of that great old Latin tune, Gaudeamus igitur, about the need to enjoy life.
He almost certainly knew a celebratory song, Cnocáinín Aerach Chill Mhuire, about Kilmurry, I believe, also near Macroom, and just west of Clodagh. In his memory, therefore, the opening stanza on that location’s delights (adapted, of all versions, from a Galway rendering, with slight modifications). He may well be singing it now, in an even better place.
Is buachaillín mise do shiúlaigh alán
Ag cur tuairisc’ na háite ’s fearr ionad
I múineadh in iompar i gcluichirt ’s i gcáil
I mbéasa i dtráchtadh ’s i miotal,
Ní heol dom aon chúige nó dúnbhaile breá
Dá bhfeicfeá im shiúltaibh ba súgaí le rá
Níor luíos riamh mo shúil ar aon dúiche chomh breá
Leis an áit úd a nglaotar Cill Mhuire air.
Neil Buttimer, 2 March 2022.